This application incorporates by reference Taiwanese application Ser. No. 89221664, Filed on Dec. 13, 2000.
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a tray for carrying Integrated Circuit Packages (IC packages) and more particularly to an Integrated Circuit Tray (IC tray) that prevents operators from placing IC packages in wrong directions.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the development of the IC packaging technology, area packages such as the Ball Grid Array (BGA), Flip Chips (FC), Land Grid Area (LGA) and Pin Grid Array (PGA) are the existing package types with great potential in future development. Of all the area packages mentioned above, BGA, LGA and PGA belong to Type Grid Area (Type GA). The conventional way to ship the above-mentioned IC packages, take the PGA IC package for instance, is to place them in an IC tray. As shown in FIG. 1, a top-view of a conventional IC tray for carrying IC packages is illustrated. In addition, the IC tray disclosed complies with the standard industrial specifications according to the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) and is therefore called the JEDEC tray.
Referring to FIG. 1, an IC tray 100 with a number of IC cavities 102 is illustrated. Each of the IC cavities 102, having a square opening 104 with a separator 105 located on it, accommodates an IC package (not shown here). The separator 105 can be a square shaped one like the separator 106 and/or an X-shaped one like the separator 108. The X-shaped separator 108 can be situated within the square shaped separator 106 and thus the two types of separators are integrated into one.
The above-mentioned separator 105 is used to prevent operators from touching the pins at the bottom of the IC package. For example, during the manufacturing process of IC packaging, the IC packages in the IC tray need to be displaced if they were found to have any problem by the operator or if power off occurred. Since the conventional IC tray lacks of directional design, the operator can only rely on the direction of letters or the directional index of the IC package to determine the direction of placement. Therefore the IC packages are likely to be placed in wrong directions resulting in wasted time and difficulties in the subsequent manufacturing processes.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a wrong-direction preventing directional IC tray for carrying IC packages that prevents the users or operators from placing the IC packages into it in wrong directions, therefore effectively improves the convenience and yield rate in the subsequent manufacturing processes.
According to the object of the invention, a directional IC tray for carrying IC packages is provided. The directional IC tray includes a number of IC cavities for accommodating and orientating a number of IC packages in position by using directional designs. Each IC cavity has the first direction indicator corresponding to the second direction indicator of the IC package. As a consequence, incorrect placement of IC packages can be avoided.